But her parents would never let her join a club for fun. They didn’t see the benefit of making friends. They didn’t understand how lonely Millie felt and how desperately important it was for her to feel like she belonged at Brightside Academy.
Like she belonged somewhere. The truth was, more often than not, Millie felt like she and her parents came from different worlds.
J-Pop was about as foreign to her parents as playing the flute had become to Millie. And if Millie couldn’t be convinced to be excited about honor band, there wasn’t a chance in the world she could convince her parents to be excited about J-Club.
It wasn’t practical enough. Educational enough.
And then, sometime between the xylophone solo and the trumpet section butchering their entrance, Millie remembered something she’d heard in a Generation Love interview.
Chiyo Aoki, the lead singer of Generation Love, once talked about her audition for the group during an appearance on a Japanese talk show. She admitted to being so nervous that she didn’t even tell anyone she was auditioning. Instead, she told her parents she was attending a study session after school and then took a train across the city to try out for the new pop group.
Maybe Millie needed to be more like Chiyo. Maybe she needed to take control of her destiny. And even though her plan would involve lying to her parents, Millie told herself it was the only way.
Chiyo had chased after her dreams, and look where it got her. She was the lead singer of the biggest pop group in Japan. Millie had to at least try. The future of her social life—and happiness—depended on it.
So she spent the rest of the day thinking of the perfect lie, and by the time she got home, it hardly felt like a lie at all.
“I have to stay late tomorrow after school,” Millie said, her pen hovering over her Math homework.
Jane looked up from across the table. She was going through the mail, a mess of envelopes sprawled in front of her. “Why? Did something happen?”
“No,” Millie said, trying to sound casual. “But some of the teachers suggested I join Advanced Studies. It’s a teacher-run after-school study session to help students with test-taking and essay-writing. It’s good for someone like me, who is behind on that kind of thing.” She couldn’t believe she got all the words out without tripping over her tongue.
“I hardly think you’re behind,” Jane said, her voice sounding almost defensive.
“I am,” Millie replied stiffly. When her mom raised a brow, Millie softened her expression. “It’s not your fault. It’s just that things move a lot faster at school. I want to make sure I’m on the same level as everyone else.”
Jane seemed to chew on her thoughts, her fingers tap-tap-tapping against the nearest envelope. “Well, I don’t know. I’d have to talk to your dad about it when he gets home.”
Millie shrugged. Inside, her heart was about to explode. She had to pretend she didn’t want this. That it was more the school’s idea than her own.
After all, her parents had a history of disapproving of the things Millie wanted most.
“It’s not a big deal if you don’t want me to go. It was Mrs. Devon’s idea.” The lies left a bitter aftertaste in Millie’s mouth. She tried to remind herself it was for a good cause.
“I mean, if your teacher thinks it would be helpful…” Jane’s voice trailed off. “And it’s teacher-run?”
“Every Thursday.”
“And there’s a late bus?”
“Yes.”
Her mom smiled. “Okay. Well, I don’t think that should be a problem. I guess it’s never too early to start practicing for the SATs.”
Millie couldn’t even bring herself to be annoyed at the comment. Because her mom had said yes.
She bit down on the inside of her cheek and went back to her Math homework, too terrified to let her mom see how she was glowing from the inside out.
Because tomorrow, when her parents thought she was in Advanced Studies practicing essay-writing, Millie would be in J-Club meeting people who shared her passion.
It didn’t matter that she had lied to her parents and felt a horrible sense of guilt deep in her belly. Because on the surface, Millie felt like a firework, fizzing and popping and ready to burst.
Tomorrow, she would finally make friends. And that was worth ten thousand lies.
Besides, Millie’s lies weren’t hurting anyone. Maybe that meant they weren’t really so bad.
She repeated the thought to herself, again and again, and by the time she was in bed, ready to sleep, she realized she had finally started to believe it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The campus felt transformed after the final yellow bus pulled away from the curb. Millie never knew school could be so still.
She pulled at the straps of her backpack self-consciously. Even though she wasn’t doing anything wrong, it still felt like at any moment a teacher would appear to scold her for missing the bus or for wandering through the school without a hall pass.
Her eyes darted around the empty courtyard. She was hoping to spot somebody else who might be headed to J-Club, but she couldn’t seem to find any clues. Key chains, stickers, pins—the usual markers of a J-Pop fan—were nowhere in sight.
If anyone nearby was as obsessed with Japanese pop music as Millie was, they were being incognito about it.
Millie made her way past the PE locker rooms and the track field before she had to cross the road that separated the music, dance, and theater buildings from the rest of the campus. The flyer, which Millie kept tucked away in her binder, said to meet in Room F-206, which was the orchestra room.
Maybe it meant some of the people in J-Club were music majors, which was a good start. The more things they had in common, the better.
She passed the band room, feeling her chest tighten at the sound of the jazz band rehearsing late. It reminded her how excited her parents were at the idea of a flute choir.
They’d be upset if they ever found out Millie was lying. Furious, even. But Millie needed this more than her parents could possibly understand.
Pushing the sound of saxophone riffs and cymbal crashes from her mind, Millie turned the corner and made her way toward the orchestra room.
She stared at the big blue door for a while, wondering if it would be weird to knock or weirder to walk right in. What were the rules? Why was socializing always so complicated?
With a timid breath and shaky hands, Millie pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The first thing she noticed were all the chairs. Most of them were folded and stacked at the back of the room, but a handful were still standing near the podium.
The second thing she noticed was how empty the room was, apart from one girl who stood out against her beige surroundings like a carnival at the edge of the sea.
She had bubblegum-pink streaks in her black hair and eyes that rounded into saucers when she spotted Millie near the doorway. Her bow tie was loose around her neck, and her sleeves were pushed up past her elbows, revealing at least ten rows of rainbow-hued bracelets.
Millie couldn’t remember if she’d seen her around school before, which probably meant she hadn’t. It would be impossible to see someone so colorful and not remember them.
Maybe that was a downside to going to a K-to-twelve school. Sometimes people got lost in the crowd.
“Are you here for the J-Club meeting?” the girl asked, head tilting to the side.
Millie barely had a chance to nod before the girl leaped out of her chair and clapped her hands excitedly, bouncing on her toes like she’d just heard the greatest news.
“Oh my gosh, yay!” She hurried toward Millie and threw her arm forward. When Millie didn’t move, she grabbed hold of her hand anyway and began shaking furiously. And then words exploded out of her like she was an actual volcano. “Hi, I’m Zuki! It’s so nice to meet you. Did you see the flyer? Is that why you’re here? I knew they would work. Charlie Franklin from Science said nobody would ever join J-Club when there was already A
nime Club and Manga Club, but I knew he was wrong. I can’t wait to tell him tomorrow what an old expired jug of milk he is. Do you know Charlie? He’s the worst—don’t talk to him, if you can help it. All he does is make fun of ev-er-y-thing. Are you in sixth grade, too? I’ve never seen you around. You must not be an orchestra major, or I’d definitely remember you. I play the violin. Ms. Jimenez lets me use this room for J-Club meetings, but we have to put all the chairs away when we’re done. Which isn’t too much work, but it will be even less work now that there are two of us!”
She was still shaking Millie’s hand, her eyes too busy bursting with excitement to notice.
“Um. I’m a band major,” Millie said timidly, and Zuki seemed to settle long enough to release her hand.
“Oh, cool! We’re practically neighbors then. Do you want a Starburst?” Zuki skipped toward her fiery-orange backpack and pulled out a disheveled, half-eaten pack of candy. “I ate all the pink ones already—they’re my favorite.” She held it up to Millie with a toothy smile.
Millie hesitated before taking one of the yellow pieces.
Zuki didn’t stop grinning. “Good choice.” She turned quickly, her movements sharp and impatient, and picked up a binder from one of the chairs. It had the name Tina Suzuki written on the front, with a collage of stickers plastered all over. Zuki caught Millie’s gaze and tapped her finger against the writing. “It’s just in case I lose it somewhere. Only my parents call me Tina. And teachers. And people I don’t know very well.” She paused for a second before tumbling into a laugh. “So I guess everyone calls me Tina, but I don’t really like it. It doesn’t say anything about me, and names should say something, you know?” Her eyes tripled in size again, fingers gripping the binder in front of her. “Oh my gosh, I forgot to ask your name!”
Millie couldn’t help but break into a smile, and when she did, she felt her nerves start to settle. Zuki’s unapologetic enthusiasm was infectious. “I’m Millie. Millie Nakakura.”
Zuki wagged a finger energetically. “You’re Japanese, too! I knew it. You look a little like Miyuki from Generation Love. Do you listen to them?”
Millie’s heart felt like a helicopter, knocking everything in the wrong direction. “Yes!” she practically shouted. “They’re my absolute favorite.”
“Me too!” Zuki squealed, thrusting the binder forward again. “Chiyo is my favorite member, of course.” She motioned toward her pink streaks, pointing to the stickers of Generation Love and Chiyo’s identical pink hair color. “But I love all of them. Do you have their new album? I’ve been listening to it nonstop for weeks.”
“So have I,” Millie nodded a thousand times. “Chiyo is my idol, too. But I also like Hana, because she’s so funny.”
“So funny,” Zuki agreed, turning several pages in her binder before presenting it to Millie. “I was working on this playlist. It’s what I think are their top ten hits, but I’m struggling to narrow it down. Their album Sugar Pop was just so good, but now with E-Volve out, it’s just too many good ones to choose from.” She sighed dreamily, like not knowing how to pick her favorite songs was the most perfect problem in the world to have.
Millie had never related to someone more in her life.
She scanned the list, recognizing every song title as easily as if she were looking through a favorite box of crayons. And it felt good to finally feel like she was speaking the same language as another human being.
Her smile was so wide her cheeks started to hurt.
They sat down to compare their favorite songs, taking turns playing each example from their phones like they needed to be reminded how much they loved them. And with each song, their excitement grew bigger and wider until it filled the entire room. They barely took a breath to stop talking, and by the time the late bell rang, Millie couldn’t believe a whole hour had passed already.
Zuki stuffed her binder into her backpack. “You’re coming back next Thursday, right?”
“Definitely,” Millie said, her entire body feeling like it was buzzing.
Zuki looked relieved. “Good. Because you’re vice president now. I’m so glad to finally have someone to plan things with!”
“I can’t believe we’re the only two members,” Millie said in genuine disbelief. “We can’t possibly be the only people in this school who like J-Pop.”
Zuki laughed, walking side by side with Millie toward the door. “I’ve been trying to recruit people for forever, but nobody ever turns up. Well, except for the time when these two art majors stopped by and realized this wasn’t Anime Club.” She rolled her eyes. “You’d think people here would appreciate Japanese culture for more than just its monster-angel-robot-whatever cartoons. I don’t like anime, for the record. Except for Studio Ghibli, but I don’t think that really counts.”
Millie decided not to mention how much she loved Pokémon, Sailor Moon, Rozen Maiden, and the handful of other anime she had grown up watching.
Millie reached for the door but paused when Zuki stopped a few steps behind her. Her face was scrunched up in concentration. Or maybe it was a frown.
Millie’s heart sped up, her mind racing backward to think of what she might’ve done wrong. “What’s the matter?”
Zuki sighed, her shoulders falling. “I’m sorry if I talk too much. Everyone says I do. I just get excited and sometimes I don’t know when to stop.” A second passed before more words poured out of her. “You don’t mind, do you? If you do, I can try harder not to say so many things. Charlie says it’s annoying—not that he would even know, because I barely talk to him. Not since he called me ‘Zucchini’ in front of the entire class. But my parents are always telling me to be quiet, too, so I guess it must be annoying.”
“You can talk as much as you want,” Millie said with a shrug, mostly relieved she wasn’t the only one worried about making a good impression. “I don’t mind.”
Zuki’s face lit up again, her laugh resembling a hiccup. “Hey, let’s swap numbers, okay? In case we have to talk about club stuff before next Thursday.”
Fifteen minutes later, Millie was sitting on the late bus when she felt her phone vibrate. Her first instinct was to assume it was her parents.
Maybe they had called the school, or run into one of her teachers, or used some kind of parental psychic connection to learn the truth. Maybe all of this was just too good to be true, and she’d never go to another J-Club meeting again.
But when she looked at her screen, it wasn’t either of her parents’ names that appeared. It was Zuki’s.
And as Millie sent the very first text to her very first friend, she felt her heart sing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Millie stepped off the school bus on Friday morning and it took her three whole seconds to realize it wasn’t a coincidence that Zuki was standing at the front gate.
Zuki was waiting for her.
A smile stretched across Zuki’s face, both rows of teeth on display. “Hey, stranger! I have something for you.” She swung her backpack around and began rummaging inside. “Here.” She thrust a fist in front of her, dropping something small and colorful into Millie’s open palm.
It was a key chain with a string of blue, pink, orange, yellow, and white beads hanging in a row. When Millie looked closer, she realized the white beads each had a small black letter in the center, forming the word J-CLUB.
“I tried to make it match your backpack,” Zuki said. She lifted her own bag and flicked an almost identical key chain dangling from one of the zips. Hers was pink and purple—Chiyo’s favorite colors. “They’re so we can promote the club,” she offered gleefully.
Millie’s cheeks reddened. The only presents she ever got were from her parents. She wasn’t sure exactly what to say.
“Thank you. I love it,” she said finally, and Zuki seemed pleased.
Millie hooked the key chain onto the front zipper of her backpack before swinging it back over her shoulders. She’d have to remember to remove it on the bus every day; if her parents saw it, they
might have questions.
“What do you have for first period?” Zuki asked.
“I used to have Earth Science, but my schedule changed. So now it’s Math.”
“I have Geography, so I can walk with you to class. It’s on the way!” Zuki half skipped toward the quad, pausing near the gate to make sure Millie was beside her.
Usually Millie was hyperaware of the crowd around her. The people moving in pairs, and the animated conversations she was never a part of.
But walking with Zuki made all of that go away. She didn’t feel like people were staring at her or noticing all the things she was doing wrong. She practically forgot she was even at school until the first bell rang, and Mr. Kwan appeared in front of her desk.
“Tina, while I appreciate your newfound passion for math, you only have two minutes to get to your next class,” he said, his eyes full of humor despite his serious tone.
“Sorry, Mr. Kwan. I’m going,” Zuki squeaked, leaping out of the chair she’d been temporarily borrowing. She waved at Millie. “See you at lunch?”
Millie smiled back, and Zuki disappeared through the doorway.
When Millie stepped into the cafeteria later that afternoon, Zuki had already saved a table for the two of them. They hurried in line to get their food, with Zuki talking in rapid-fire speed about her morning classes and the ranking of her favorite to least-favorite teachers.
“Chicken burger day is the best lunch day,” Zuki said before falling into her chair and taking a massive bite of food.
Millie felt a trail of mayonnaise in the corner of her mouth and wiped it away with her knuckle. “Definitely better than pizza day.”
Zuki widened her eyes as if to say, I know, right? before pointing at the notebook between them. “So”—she swallowed—“this is the updated playlist. I shifted these tracks around because I feel like number four is always a ballad, but I’m still not sure about number nine.”
“I like it,” Millie said, eating a fry like sitting at lunch with a friend was the most normal thing in the world. “I think it has a good balance. Plus, they’re all amazing songs.”
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